


Bitter My Heart

by Ruriruri



Category: Rebuild of Evangelion | Evangelion: New Theatrical Edition
Genre: F/F
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-08-01
Updated: 2018-08-01
Packaged: 2019-06-19 21:00:07
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 957
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15518472
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Ruriruri/pseuds/Ruriruri
Summary: Now, right now, in SEELE’s wreck of a hospital ward, smelling the rot of the place, the rot of the world, like Hiroshima, like Nagasaki, like hell itself had swallowed up—everything—Mari breathes in blood and breathes out poetry. Mari/Yui.





	Bitter My Heart

**Author's Note:**

> Weird, overreaching. This has been unfinished on my list of docs for a long time, but Final allegedly coming out in 2020 spurred me to wrap this up.

"Bitter My Heart"

by Ruriruri

ELO was playing the day of Second Impact.

Mari remembered—Mari always remembered—four-four time, electronics masking pain, overdubs and hooks and a cacophony of overdone imitation. ELO was her favorite of those doddy British bands. Calling America. Sweet Talking Woman. 2095, all automated _i love you sincerely yours truly yours truly_. She had it on her Walkman, that Time album on tape, bought on clearance two-three years ago for just a couple pounds, a reluctant add-on then. Grunge was in and Mari had never been in. Visual kei was in and Mari had never been in, and all she could really hope for was a nostalgic wave hitting the planet

_\--i love you sincerely—_

instead of the red cratered moon and the taste of a tube in her throat.

It was some breakdown. Some breakup, the worst kind in the _world_ when the chorus started, there on the radio in her Frankfurt apartment. She’d been thinking of turning it off, of letting her own acrid melancholy drown the whole damn medley of classic rock; she’d been thinking of letters and emails she wouldn’t open; she’d been thinking of

_\--yours truly, yours truly_

her when it all fell apart.

She’s still thinking about her. Still thinking of blue-green eyes and a short dark bob. Nothing ELO would memorialize, nothing they’d plug into those ancient mixers. They’d write lyric after lyric for an evil woman or a sweet-talking woman, but not a great mind like Yui.

It’s too bad. It’s too bad because those rockers were right. It’s too bad because Mari’s wasted her time not realizing that a great mind, a truly great mind, is born every day. Her kind have never been in short supply. That’s what she never knew until now, that being brilliant isn’t special.

A great mind can stay—plastic. Moldable. Shaped and reshaped, done and undone, like the flashy pixels on a loading screen. Now, right now, in SEELE’s wreck of a hospital ward, smelling the rot of the place, the rot of the world, like Hiroshima, like Nagasaki, like hell itself had swallowed up—everything—Mari breathes in blood and breathes out poetry. Not Sapphic or Spenserian or Miltonian but Jeff Lynn and Richard Starkey. _i love you sincerely yours truly yours truly you’re sixteen you’re beautiful and you’re mine_. She’s choking it out through the tubing, laughing at the bubbles every move in the tank produces because it’s all really very funny, really very funny—even when Yui comes calling, belly round, and the gag seems up—Mari is laughing still.

Regret is always stamped on Yui’s forehead. Her swollen stomach (is it Gendo’s baby? Is it his or is it a continuation, a revolution? won’t you WON’T YOU stop it Yui stop it _stoppit_ ) is full of promise for a future Mari can’t be a part of. SEELE wants her carted away to an institution where she can pitter her time away singing classic rock ballads and crocheting scarves. SEELE will pay for it in Japan, no problem, no problem. The NHS will pay for it in England. But her body’s been suffused in Lilith’s blood so long they aren’t sure if she’ll disintegrate without it or gain all her faculties again.

They don’t know that she has all her faculties. They won’t know. They can’t.

For example, she can and does still balance chemical equations in her head, at intervals. When she feels like it. For example, she still remembers John Donne’s saucy early poetry and somber later writings, and how he pondered the mystery of the Trinity, three Gods in one, like an eighties supergroup. There, she even remembers how to be sacrilegious, and that’s a truer sign of sanity than any. 

And while sacrilege bubbles in her bloody world, she knows that Tabris wanders somewhere in the compound. Half hers and none of hers. Tabris is a god in the image of man, probably toddling around while she sings herself hoarse. She wonders, as Mary must have, if Tabris inherited any of her mortal foibles. A fondness for semi-modern composers and sorry pop songs, maybe. A predilection for the same sex, maybe (yours truly, yours truly). A stupid bravado, maybe. It doesn’t really matter when she’ll never see him. Won’t search for him in a temple with a sham husband at her side, finding him going about his Father’s business. Won’t watch him die. It’s fine. Tabris probably won’t ever know Mari was ever in the picture. Yui’s baby won’t know if Gendo wasn’t.

It’s fine.

Mari’s becoming the has-been already, the one-hit-wonder that’s begging for radio play and performing for an empty stadium. She can’t court an audience when no one’s listening. Oh, there’s still a tape recorder, still a security camera locked on her tank of LCL. But the scientists stop coming by for more than routine analysis.

Maybe they’re mesmerized by a new sensation. A new rising star to hit the charts, someone dazzling. Someone who’ll go gold, platinum, triple-platinum. Someone who’ll bear a son. Yui’s belly, heavy with intimation, haunts Mari with all she couldn’t manage, all she wasn’t willing to partake in. Undeniable proof that someone’s been inside her, whether man or angel, that someone _is_ inside her, breathing as she breathes, depending on her every heartbeat like Mari depends on Lilith’s blood. Like Mari depends on the classic rock they’ve started piping in just-for-her, and the chips and sodas and peculiarities she’s begun to request between songs now that they’ve determined she’ll be off the IV drip.

Like Mari depends on the promise

(is it what you really want)

of Yui’s next visit as the same battered album plays on repeat in her brain.

finis


End file.
